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balance

With the taking down of the decorations and repairing whatever damage was incurred from the holidays, comes the familiar call to action to improve yourself with a new job, a new life; a new everything! For someone who has recently embarked on trying something new in a huge way, this kind of sent me into questioning the merits of changing everything in your life at a time that boasts the importance of tradition and things staying the same. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had made the right choice in abandoning the privileges of First World life for to chase a dream that was providing more stress than that expected euphoric “I just mastered a this really cool trick” feeling.

Then my friend Darrell Kinsel sent me this link to an NPR interview he was featured in and it hit me like a fatal coconut falling from the top of a tree: things are unbelievably difficult for our generation EVERY WHERE IN THE WORLD. Every one is making or has made incredible sacrifices just to nudge their careers forward, because that is what we have to do right now. Although we were promised this was going to be easy, and social media lets us portray our lives as flawless, beautiful and inspiring, there are an incredible amount of tears, self doubt, and drunken binges behind every story. Each person interviewed reminded the audience that our generation was handed an incredibly difficult hand and that things are going to take a lot longer to accomplish, but they can be accomplished. The shear optimism in every response was enough to get me to take a look around and realize that things are the way they are right now because they have to be, its an incredibly frustrating step on my path to go wherever I am supposed to be going.

For me, I thought moving to Haiti would be easy since I have such strong family support and I’m was familiar with the country. I never dreamed that I would feel the void of the incredible friends that I left behind or come to expect the statement, we don’t have gas, desk planners, etc. because there’s a hold up somewhere in the supply chain. Though these things were unexpected, I know that I need the work experience and very few other places can offer it while I live with my grandmother and my uncle. This sacrifice is what I needed to do and it will pay off. In many ways, it already has. What have you sacrificed this past year so you can move your dream forward?